Worth: $15.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Intro:
… at times epic, fascinating, gorgeous but also bloated and uneven.
Tell you what, Game of Thrones sure made a seismic impact on popular culture. That’s a pretty obvious statement, with about the same level of profundity as “water is wet” or “politicians are deeply disappointing people”, but it was running through your humble word janitor’s head while playing Final Fantasy XVI.
See, this latest entry in the long-running Japanese RPG series makes some seismic changes tonally, takes big risks practically and imbues itself with a distinctly Westerosi flavour, for both good and ill. The result is a game that is at times epic, fascinating, gorgeous but also bloated and uneven.
Final Fantasy XVI puts you in the fancy leather pants of Clive, firstborn son of the land of Rosaria’s royal family. Ol’ mate’s life of privilege and wealth doesn’t last long, however, as a supernatural incident that causes the death of most of his family, and an invasion by the enemy forces of Sanbreque, leaves Clive trapped in grim servitude. Essentially, he becomes a living weapon for the very mongrels who destroyed his family home. Thirteen years later, events transpire that cause Clive to desert, join up with a bunch of rebels and start a whole new adventure of discovery, revelation and hopefully, redemption.
That’s about as bare bones a retelling of the story of FFXVI, because you need to understand, this yarn is epic in terms of both scope and length. The problem? It’s also a bit of a mess. The cut scenes are ridiculously gorgeous, the voice acting solid, but the plot is this weird ungainly hodge podge of camp Japanese RPG tropes juxtaposing uneasily with grimdark fantasy mainstays. Imagine if half the cast at GoT’s infamous “Red Wedding” had been riding giant chickens and wearing a disturbing amount of hair product and you’ll sort of get the idea. Worse still, the script does this thing where characters go over the same points over and over again. And again. And one more time. And then again. Until it gets to the stage where you’ll desperately want to skip the dialogue scenes because they’re so repetitive and protracted, but you can’t, because there’s a good chance you’ll miss an important nugget of information hidden in the sea of redundancy.
Mind you, Final Fantasy’s stories have always been a bit hit or miss. With FFXVI, it’s all about the combat, which is on much more solid ground. On the downside, in this game you control Clive himself and (basically) no one else. This means that none of the fun team mechanics of previous entries in the series are present here. However, the combat has been fine-tuned and works really well as a slick, fast-paced character action jam, even if series veterans might occasionally miss the turn-based combat that was recently revisited so effectively in Final Fantasy VII Remake. The boss fights, in particular, are truly stunning affairs that will test your abilities in ways that the various wandering trash mobs likely won’t, and often end with jaw-dropping cinematics.
FFXVI is a long-arse game. You’re going to be playing around in this world for 50+ hours, enjoying the combat but enduring the leaden storytelling beats, sluggish pace and shallow RPG mechanics. If you can look past these major shortcomings (as many of us looked past the glaring flaws in other chapters of the franchise), there is a striking and bold game to enjoy here. If, however, you’re mainly hanging around for the story, this uncomfortable collision of grimdark clichés and Japanese RPG hallmarks may mystify more than it enchants.
